


Heartland

by Kalanon (Kalael)



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Community: rotg_kink, Fatherly!North, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:48:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalael/pseuds/Kalanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kink meme fill.</p><p>Although he had lived in the pond by Burgess for three hundred years, he’d never felt the urge to visit the cemetery. Death had seemed unfathomable before he regained his memories. It was off-limits to him, so he hadn’t gone prodding into the mystery of human passing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartland

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:  
> Jack visits on old cemetery in burgess and finds the graves of his family. He's doing a pretty good job of holding it together until he finds his own headstone. Cue emotional breakdown. 
> 
> +1000: Fatherlike North.   
> +100000: Guardians somehow witness all of it.

Burgess was an old city with an even older cemetery. Long before it was on the map, Burgess had been an insignificant, unnamed settlement populated by a few families. The small family plots gradually grew larger and larger until the tombstones were in rows spanning a few hundred years. It was a fantastic attraction on Halloween, especially since the Family Committee had started doing haunted trails for the kids.

The Guardians hadn’t had much trouble with Pitch since Easter, but since Halloween was Pitch’s strongest night of the year they had figured it was better to be safe than sorry. That was why they were all roaming Burgess, knowing that Jamie and his friends would be targets if Pitch decided to enact revenge. Since it was Halloween the kids wouldn’t notice them among all the other costumed adults, but due to a recent increase in believers Jack had been relegated to cemetery duty to avoid causing an uproar among the many children who knew him by heart. Eventually the kids went to bed and the teenagers grew bored with their shenanigans, though some of the parents stayed out so late that the night was coming to an end, pale ochre light spreading through dusky blue as the sun prepared to reach over the hills.

Jack had been entertaining himself by roaming through the rows of graves and covering tombstones with layers of patterned frost. Although he had lived in the pond by Burgess for three hundred years, he’d never felt the urge to visit the cemetery. Death had seemed unfathomable before he regained his memories. It was off-limits to him, so he hadn’t gone prodding into the mystery of human passing. Now that he knew the truth of his own creation, however, the cemetery was a little disturbing. The further back he went the older dates on the stones got. He remembered some of those years, remembered some of the names, remembered some of the faces in half-blinked after burns on the insides of his eyelids. Those were people he had never really known, but he had seen them during his years of aimless roaming.

Gold sand streamed down in front of him and Jack jumped back to avoid being knocked out by it. “Watch it, Sandy!” He hollered, and the sand formed a shape that could be described as apologetic before it turned into an arrow pointing north. “Give me a moment, Sandy, I’m almost done here.” The sand quavered, unusually indecisive, then faded out of sight. Jack continued forward.

The back of the cemetery was a little overgrown and wild, but apparently the caretaker had made sure to clean this area up every once in a while. The words on some of the headstones were so worn that Jack could hardly read them, but he had a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow down. He’d found the Overland family plot, the earliest stone belonging to his Grandpa Boots. There was Grandma Wiley and Great Uncle Thomas, mysterious Auntie Miriam who’d never married, the broken stone that marked the small grave of Auntie Miriam’s dog. They were familiar graves; these had been here since before…before.

His mother and father were there too, a shared stone with both their names half rubbed off and Jack reverently traced the inscriptions marking them as ‘loving parents’. He tried to recall their faces, the sounds of their voices, anything to lessen the sharp ache that formed in his chest when the graves confirmed what was already obvious. He moved on, biting back tears because there wasn’t anything he could do about it now.

“Jack?” A female voice rang out and it was obviously Tooth, the other Guardians had been looking for him, but Jack turned sharply towards the call and found himself staring at his sister’s headstone. The dates sent a wave of crippling relief through his body and he caught himself on his staff. She’d lived to be an old lady and apparently a mother, if the inscription could be relied on. There was another stone, half hidden by his sister’s and slightly askew, and Jack’s smile was frozen in place as water rushed around his ears.

“It’s no time for games, mate!” Bunny sounded annoyed but the words were garbled as though he were underwater and Jack gasped for breath, scrabbling at the air around him and catching on the stone with his own name engraved into it. Permanence. Death had been off-limits to him for so long, and seeing the proof of his own human death sent a shock through his system that was like being plunged beneath the ice and drowned all over again.

There were hands on his shoulders, pulling him out of the pool of his thoughts and bundling him into a warm chest. A beard scratched at his face and Jack wailed into North’s shoulder, full body shaking and leaving ice crystal tears in the fur of North’s coat. North was murmuring something in Russian, stroking Jack’s back and looking more pained than Bunnymund could ever remember seeing him. Tooth was flitting back and forth between the grave that had set Jack off and Jack himself with a concerned expression while Bunnymund knelt in front of the headstone with a critical expression. It took a moment to make the connection but when it clicked, Bunny felt his blood run cold. Sandy gave him a long look, one that spoke volumes. Of course the Sandman knew. Jack had probably been having dreams about this since he’d regained his memories.

“C’mon, Tooth, let’s give the boy some space.” Bunny said softly. Tooth hesitated, wanting to know what was wrong, but Bunny just shook his head and took her hand. “He’ll tell us later if he’s up for it. North’s got him now, we can’t do much. You too, Sandy, let’s go.” Bunnymund opened a portal and three disappeared, leaving North and Jack in the cemetery.

It took a long time but eventually Jack fell still with only the occasional sniffle. North still had him cradled against his chest. He had never noticed how small Jack was before then. Still a boy.

“I was seventeen when I died,” Jack started off shakily, and North closed his eyes. A three hundred year old boy, not even a man by modern standards, and North had failed Jack more than he could have realized. A child who had died without even knowing it. North held Jack close and just listened. He would do better now. He would make things better.

He would make things right.


End file.
